Wednesday, January 31, 2018

1/31 edition, Pension Issues in the News

JANUARY 31, 2018

MINNESOTA NEWS + OPINION

Minneapolis Committee of 13
An organization that spends millions of dollars on a state-by-state effort to privatize public pensions is now playing a significant role in pension discussions at the Minnesota state capitol. The Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement (LCPR) heard testimony on Wednesday from a University ...

Minnesota Public Radio News
Whether it comes to dealing with pensions or the opioid crisis or making sure that people who were brought to this country when they were children have a path to citizenship. That's something that we've got bipartisan agreement on. So let's do it. Republicans are of course teeing up the criticism. Senate ...

St. Cloud Times
State pension reform and stabilization will be on O'Driscoll's agenda this spring. "People are living longer, healthier and happier, which is all good," O'Driscoll said. He wants to make sure the pension system is equipped to handle that. He'll be looking at the Minnesota election process to see if there are ...

TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
That entails a focus on issues in which the league can be “distinctly useful,” she told us, citing property taxes, public pensions and the workforce among possibilities, and noting that the league uses events to test member interest and the resonance of topics. A December gathering on aging, for example, ...


NATIONAL NEWS + OPINION
Reason Foundation
Major Advisors Lower Their Long-Term Investment Return Outlooks, Curbing Public Pension Plans' Enthusiasm. Public pension plans should use these market outlook updates to better gauge their long-term investment return assumptions and safeguard pension assets from the future market volatilities.

Chicago Tribune
While full details of this plan are expected to be unveiled Tuesday before a state panel, bond and public finance experts are already highly skeptical. They're concerned it will add to Illinois' pension burdens — now estimated at $130 billion in unfunded liabilities and growing — and further hinder the ...

In These Times
Recent history offers no support for the idea that magical stock market profits—rather than actual contributions—can save the public pension system. Stock prices more than tripled between their low in March 2009 and the end of the third quarter of 2017, but according to Federal Reserve statistics, this ...

Pension Policy International
A new research paper from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business discusses the rationality (or otherwise) of the return expectations of institutional investors, with especial reference to public pension funds. It finds that the returns that pension fund managers expect from their investments are ...

Chief Investment Officer
Public pension systems saw a year of positive returns, adopting more conservative investment assumptions as well as budgeting their spending, an annual National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) report shows. Pulling responses from 164 state and local government ...

Barron's
Yet many pensions still assume they will be able to generate the returns they saw in the past. New Jersey's pension and the California Public Employees' Retirement System have lowered their assumed rate of return to 7%. But with the 30-year Treasury yielding less than 3% and stocks already at record ...

Quad City Times
Bertrand said he opposes any changes to the Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System, or IPERS. ... Iowa's public employee pension funds are funded at more than 80 percent, according to multiple independent studies, and that typically ranks it among the healthiest public pension funds in the nation.

PLANSPONSOR
In 2017, public pensions managed to raise the market value of fund assets above the actuarial value of assets, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) found in a survey of 164 state and local government pension funds, conducted in partnership with Cobalt ...

Pensions & Investments
Since the blissful ignorance of the pre-financial crisis period, public pension funds have had to deal with the reality of that lower return assumptions have hit the largest U.S. public pension plans. While the few plans that maintain 8%-plus return assumptions are in a better funded position than most, data ...

Business Wire (press release)
“The nation's pension systems are deeply committed to their mission of providing a secure retirement for millions of firefighters, police officers, teachers, and other public sector workers,” Kim said. “Over the seven years we have conducted this annual study, pension systems have grown increasingly ...

Yankee Institute (blog)
Teacher pensions face a much more difficult future and could grow to $6 billion per year if the state does not meet its discount rate. Unlike state employee pensions, teacher pension are set in statute and can be changed legislatively. Yankee Institute's Director of Public Policy Suzanne Bates pointed out ...

The Courier-Journal
And Bowen emphasized that retired teacher health benefits have never been part of what is known as the “inviolable contract” – a bedrock principle in state pension law that protects pension benefits given a public employee at the time they were hired. Bowen complained that the Kentucky Teachers' ...

Chief Investment Officer
The public employers that will incur the additional costs are state agencies, state universities and colleges, school districts, counties, and certain municipalities and other governmental entities. Among employer groups responsible for the additional contributions, Florida's counties would be expected to ...

SaukValley.com
Illinois lawmakers are gearing up to start another spring session that will include more attempts to address an issue that has remained stubbornly elusive so far. What can the state do to rein in the cost of public employee pensions and try to address the $129 billion debt faced by the five state-funded ...

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS
The survey of all 50 states found some are better than others when it comes to budget forecasting, putting money aside and paying down long term debts like public pensions. But Illinois was among the worst states overall in most categories. Glasgall is especially critical of how Illinois handles what are ...
Google Plus
American Legislative Exchange Council
Pensions. National: “Everything is Overvalued” – Public Pensions Face Dangerous Dilemma In 2018. National: Only One Report Has Aggregate State Pension Funding Level Above 50 Percent, Looming Insolvency Crisis Noted. Arizona: Phoenix City Councilman Aims to Reduce Public Pension Debt, ...

Pensions & Investments
Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, Columbus, approved slight changes to its target asset allocation, spokesman Todd Hutchins said in an email. The $97.5 billion retirement system, which includes $83.7 billion in pension fund assets, increased its pension fund target allocation to international ...

The State
Here's some perspective on just how hot the water will get: As a result of the bailout, taxpayers will pay more than double into the pension what public employees do. This two-to-one ratio is way out of whack; the Heartland Institute argues in its survey of states' pension systems that “a fair rule of thumb ...

WiscNews
The Wisconsin Retirement System funds — the source of pensions for nearly 198,000 retired public employees — brought in double-digit earnings in ... The state Department of Employee Trust Funds uses the results, along with an actuarial analysis, to calculate adjustments in the pension checks of ...

National Public Pension Coalition
Today Chris Christie departs the New Jersey governor's mansion. Christie's record of failure includes repeated broken promises to fund public pensions.

Chief Investment Officer
The National Association of State Retirement Administrators, (NASRA) has rejected the findings of a recent report on public pension funding from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), saying the findings contain “serious flaws.” The ALEC report claimed that US public pension plans are far ...

The Courier-Journal
FRANKFORT, Ky. – Gov. Matt Bevin on Tuesday night proposed a budget that he said would eliminate 70 state programs and cut spending at most agencies by 6.25 percent while fully funding state pension plans. And the governor gave a high priority in the lean spending plan to the main public school ...

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Murphy, 60, ran as an unabashed liberal who pledged to nearly double the minimum wage to $15, legalize marijuana, and offer free community college. He also said he would “fully fund” schools and public workers' pensions and spend more on public transportation, but it's unclear how he'll accomplish ...


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